Posts Tagged ‘Blizzard’

Blizzard are continuing to bounce merrily around their history with crossover throwdown MOBA Heroes of the Storm [official site], this time digging up a new character from before their 16-year stretch of Diablo, Warcraft, and StarCraft. Or characters, I should say. Sorta. But not. Kinda. The latest addition, see, is The Lost Vikings from ye olde puzzle-platformer of the same name, and they’re technically one single ‘hero’ but you can control all three independently.

Warcraft III‘s mod scene is grossly underrated, I’ve muttered into many a pint glass. Yes, yes, we know it was where MOBAs and tower defense games really took off, but so many more inventive and interesting and weird games bounced around, types of game I haven’t seen since. I always thought this was helped a lot by WC3 having a huge range of units and wildlife and odd art assets folks could repurpose, making mods about more than soldiers. Delightfully, loads of those WC3 bits are now coming to StarCraft II‘s editor, Blizzard have announced. The main Hero units are getting modern makeovers too.

World of Warcraft’s 6.1 patch adds a selfie camera to the MMO. Well. It adds a “S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera” which amounts to the same thing.

6.1 is live on the public test realm (PTR) at the moment and does a bunch of other things too. For example, the new character models for Blood Elves are part of 6.1, as is Twitter integration so you can share content from Azeroth to your Twitter followers.

Blizzard have released a preview for the upcoming Warlords of Draenor raid Blackrock Foundry, with info about its denizens and bosses as well as some general Foundry facts.

The raid opens on February 4th with Normal and Heroic difficulties (Mythic is slightly later on Feb 11th and Raid Finder kicks in on the 18th) taking the titular Blackrock Foundry as its setting. The Foundry used to be home to the Blackrock orcs but is now being used by Warlord Blackhand to pump out weaponry intended to destroy Azeroth.

For the low, low price of £29.99, you too can become a wizard this very day! Simple Paypal me £29.99 and I will send you detailed instructions on how to turn curtains into robes, coloured card into a pointy hat, chopsticks into wands, and socks into familiars, along with helpful tips on how to remove glitter from carpets.

I mean, you could take that 30 quid and buy a Founder’s Pack for Heroes of the Storm, getting instant access to the beta and some wizards and a special mount and jazz, but that won’t help me.

Word has sneaked out that Blizzard are introducing a new trial account type provisionally dubbed ‘Veteran Edition’ in World of Warcraft‘s update 6.1. MMO Champion turned up patch notes mentioning the Veteran Edition, leading folks to speculate away and some to start doomsaying about a free-to-play shift. Relax, it’s all fine. Blizzard stepped in to explain it’ll simply be a trial open to lapsed subscribers too.

Everyone loves Hearthstone, don’t they? Yes OK Mr Internet Commenter, I know that YOU consider the rigid turns an unacceptable oversimplification of CCG mechanics and blah blah blah, but every player I know just can’t enough of Blizzard’s card juice. Goblins vs. Gnomes is the game’s second expansion, following hot on the heels of the singleplayer adventure Naxrammas, and it adds 120 cards with one new minion class and a bunch of new effects. So is it all gravy, or a case of too many cooks?

Blizzard’s attempt to snag a trademark for its upcoming shooter Overwatch has gone a bit awry. Turns out the US Patent Office was on overwatch for stuff with the same name, and put up a roadblock when it discovered that a paintball system had filed for ‘Overwatch’ before the Warcraft folk got there.Read the rest of this entry »

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Aka ‘what one half of Blizzard made before Warcraft.’ When I was a clueless British schoolboy, The Lost Vikings seemed to be a much bigger deal on this side of the pond than Warcraft, but I’m probably just saying that as someone who happened to play the demo when he was just that little bit more impressionable than he was two years later. When I played that demo, I had to have the full thing immediately.Read the rest of this entry »

That’s a nice-looking Hearthstone deck you’ve got there. What’s that, a wolf, yeah? Cool, cool. And some dogs? A load of forest friends hanging out? Great, great, lovely. Here’s a thought: why not replace them with bombs and robots? Those are cool. All the cool kids do robots now.

The free-to-play card game’s technowizarding expansion Goblins vs. Gnomes will launch next week, Blizzard have announced. I hope you’ve been saving your dust to brew up new cards, chums.

It looks like something of a double celebration for Activision Blizzard as the company announces a sizeable uptick in World of Warcraft subscribers (they’re back above 10 million) and a settlement in that shareholder case. Party hats at dawn…